


Time bomb with amnesia

by fothetinyotter



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Akira has no time for anyone's bs, Body Horror, Character Study, Gen, Haise just wants to sleep come on, Kaneki is a pain in the ass pass it on, Kaneki is here but not really, Slight Mentions of Body Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 07:11:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5996416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fothetinyotter/pseuds/fothetinyotter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haise’s first months at the CCG are far from easy. His past self makes sure they are extra hard, for laughs. </p><p>A short fic exploring Haise's poor, sleep deprived mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time bomb with amnesia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [etotakatsuki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etotakatsuki/gifts).



> This has been accumulating dust, and I figured, hey, why not post it? 
> 
> I wrote this back in the ol' days when TG: RE had like 10 chapters out and we still had hopes that Haise and the quinx would be happy together. Some inaccuracies may be here and there.
> 
> A HUGE thank you to etotakatsuki (on ao3) / oneeyedkingeto (on tumblr) for revising this mess and for being a wonderful friend! This isn't an Eto fic, but it's still dedicated to you, man. If you guys love well written fics or insightful meta, I recommnd you their blog! You won't be dissapointed.

 

Sasaki Haise is many things, but stupid isn’t one of them.

After being told his name, age, and where he is, the white coated strangers tell him what he is.

Half ghoul, half human.

It didn’t take him long to figure out that didn’t make him desirable company; the doctors treated him like a time bomb.  
A time bomb with amnesia.

That hints towards a prospective future ahead of him.

He is told he wasn’t born this way, that some doctor named Kanou mixed ghoul organs with emergency patients and got him as a result. Kanou is currently missing, and Haise was found close to dying when the CCG picked him up as their next malnourished kitten project.

They’re not sure why he was as injured as he was. He has no known living relatives, no house registered to his name, not much of anything, really.

Oh, and he can’t eat human food. Which makes Haise a bit less human and a little more rejected.

That said and done, Haise is determined to find the upside amongst all of this.

He just hasn’t found it yet.

 

\---

 

He sits alone at the cafeteria, burrowed in a new book more often than not.

He pushes himself to smile and greet everyone that walks by, even when they dodge him or don’t do much to acknowledge him.

He doesn’t blame them, why should he? They’re probably still getting used to having what they hunt down be on their side for once.

It’s one of those days when he’s pulled from his reading by the sudden unnatural quiet in the cafeteria.

He glances up to the sight of a tall man in a white coat and equally white hair striding in.

He’s a high rank, judging from the way everyone scurries around him, tails between their legs.

And he is walking straight towards Haise.

Haise takes the few precious seconds before the man reaches him to list every possible thing he could’ve done wrong and make half thought out arguments as to why he really is worth the trouble.

Finally, the man opens his mouth and Haise squares his shoulders.

”You’re Sasaki Haise, am I right?”

”Y-Yes sir!” He tries to make his voice sound less like that of a screeching squirrel’s, he really does.

The man hums in recognition, and after a short pause, he finally says “Would you like to have a cup of coffee with me? You seem to have a good taste in books.”

Haise is sure his jaw almost hits the ground, but he replies with a quick  
“Of course” before the man changes his mind.

He can feel everyone’s burning stares as they walk together towards the man’s office.

After a while of internally debating whether to ask or not, Haise stumbles out a shy question.

“Excuse me, sir, but… What’s your name?”

The man smiles, pleased instead of offended as Haise feared he would be. “Arima Kishou.”

It’s not until later that evening, after a long friendly talk with Arima, that Haise realizes how very lonely he had been up until then.

 

\---  
  
  
The first thing that Haise realizes is that his feet are cold.

Then he notices he is nowhere he recognizes, standing in his pajamas while facing a construction site that was once, apparently, a coffee shop.

It tugs at his heartstrings in a way that makes him want to cry.

More than a little weirded out, he decides to find the closest train station before somebody realizes he is gone.

Not that anyone other than Arima would care.

Then again, where could he even go? He is nothing outside of the CCG.

It scares him to realize that he’d wandered from the 1st ward off to the 20th ward, with a big gap in his memory as to how or why.

He should have guessed that, with his luck, the trains would’ve stopped running by now already. Which means he could take a taxi with money he doesn’t have or wait two more hours for the first train back home.

He feels enough of a burden towards the CCG as it is, so he chooses to wait things out. Hopefully nobody would question his strange clothes and he’d be able to make it for another hour or so without any major embarrassment.

As he walks through the 20th ward’s streets, Haise ponders about what his past might’ve been like. He wonders about the people that could be missing him right at this very moment, or if those people even exist.

For all he knows, there isn’t anyone looking for a missing Sasaki Haise, but that doesn’t mean his life before consisted only of eating humans, right?

He wonders if anyone loved him. He wonders if he loved them back.

With any luck he can one day be happy, without memories, or a family, or more than one friend. And he guesses he still has hope for all that, because otherwise it’d be just too hard to push himself up each day.

 

\---

 

Haise tries to ignore that little night trip, going on with his CCG training as usual.

He just can’t ignore how the sparring sessions are a vague blur in his mind, yet he is told he is brutal within them.  
He flinches at the words, and apologizes profusely to his defeated opponents, who quickly learn not to fight against him at all.

This clearly isn’t gaining him any friends, and he tries hard not to hate  
himself for it.

Eventually, his only sparring partner is Arima, which means their sessions are few but they make up for it in intensity.

Haise would never tell this to Arima (not at first at least), but he is starting to remember more and more of their fights, and this does wonders for Haise’s confidence.

 

\---

  
  
Some nights, he doesn’t remember waking up, but his wrecked room, his clawed walls and his glistening kagune scare him into realizing it’s another night with a nightmare that he can’t even have the pleasure of recalling.

He’s terrified at nothing and everything all at once and the tears overwhelm him before he stumbles down to the floor.

Haise’s trembling fingers wrap around the cover of a worn out book. (Arima's copy, he remembers vaguely, as if he wasn't enough of a burden without burrowing his things.)

He drinks in every word, clinging to them like a child holding his favorite toy at an unfamiliar place. Maybe if he thinks about the book hard enough, he’ll push away the stranger that owns the first 19 years of his life.

 

\---

  
Months trickle by, and soon enough his superiors inform him he is ready to be paired with a First Class investigator.

Haise doesn’t feel ready.

In fact, Haise feels like selling ice creams would be a better career path for him. Nice and simple, plus, he wouldn’t have to fight anyone that way.

Honestly, he is afraid of what he might encounter, when faced with ghouls. He tries not to think about that part of himself, but you can’t dodge the ghoul topic for long when they’re the whole point of your work.

Ice creams don’t eat humans. Ice creams made kids happy and, most importantly, Haise wouldn’t feel guilty in case he hurt ice creams.

Yeah, life isn’t really simple.

He gets to meet his partner tomorrow and he’s going to drive himself insane thinking about what kind of person is she. 

Haise hopes she’s a friendly, not threatening-looking person. She might even like books, just like Arima, and that would open so many topics they could talk about. He keeps his fingers crossed for the rest of the day as he tells himself he won’t be too dissapointed in case she isn’t like that.

 

\---

  
Mado Akira, First Class Investigator, is, in fact, threatening looking.  
She isn’t much of an avid reader, either. She has a strange sense of humor that seems to makes fun of you and you can’t quite figure out how. She has a cat and she really likes quinques.

It makes things a bit awkward. Haise was never a fan of quinques; kagunes felt much more natural, and they were his own organ, not somebody else’s shoved inside a suitcase.

Haise had a hard time holding the thing without getting nausea, which is why Arima insisted on him using it until he was as good with it as he was with his kagune.  
  
Haise appreciated the gesture, but quinques were still pretty gross. He chooses to keep all his anti quinques thoughts to himself, as he shoots careful glances at his new partner. She’s deeply engrossed on enjoying her curry.

Mado doesn’t seem like much of a talker, either.

On the other hand, she doesn’t look at him with scorn or as if she was evaluating what kind of quinque she could make out of him, which he appreciates greatly.

Maybe they still could get along, after all.

“Mado-san-”

“Please call me Akira. You make me sound like an old man.”

“R-right, Akira-san. If I may… What made you want to join the CCG?”

For a second, Akira's eyes look almost mournfull, and she turns her piercing gaze away from him.

“Investigators get discounts at spas, so I thought it was worth a try.”

Akira’s face is as blank as ever. Haise almost believes her, but thinks it’d be safer not to.

Well, things would certainly be interesting with her around.

“Sasaki.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve heard a great deal about you. I expect only the best results.”

“I’ll do my job to the best of my abilities!” He rushes to say. Akira nods, apparently satisfied, and she turns his attention entirely away from him.

That’s the last conversation they have, for the rest of the evening.  
  
At night, he reads through three books total and he sleeps for a blissful hour without nightmares, thanks to his exhaustion.

 

\---

  
They get assigned their next case; the mango peeler, wherein humans are the mangos and she likes to get creative with where to drop the peels afterwards. Sometimes at pet stores, others at butchers, and once in a while, at the victim’s loved ones’ rooms.

The mango peeler does wonders to lessen Haise’s guilt when killing ghouls.

God, no wonder CCG employees were payed this much.

Akira’s old cuckoo clock reads 4 am. Haise has to crane his neck to look at it from over the books and research papers scattered across Akira’s apartment.

They’ve been here since their shift ended, and they’re no closer to figuring the mango peeler’s whereabouts.

Akira’s not in the business of resting when she could damn well be doing something useful, and if she’s gonna suffer through consecutive all nighters then Haise will, too.

Ha. And it’s only Tuesday. This week is going to be fantastic.

The only noise that can be heard throughout Akira’s house is the sound of Akira’s fingers tapping mercilessly through her laptop’s keyboard.

Haise flips through their case file, carefully reading each page for any bit of information they might have missed.

He comes across a list full of the Ghoul’s previous victims.

“Akira?”

“What is it?”

“Why do you think ghouls even exist?” Haise murmurs.

“Sasaki.” Akira says in her stern mom voice.

“Y-yes?” He smiles innocently at her.

“If you can afford to philosophize, then I’ll have to double your assignments for today.”

“Oh, no it’s fine! See, I just thought..”

Akira keeps staring at him so Haise does the wise thing to shut up and keep working.

“Maybe God just doesn’t like happiness.” Akira replies, hours after Haise’s question.

That’s really the biggest proof to them both that they need to sleep.

 

\---

 

On his first snowfall (the first one he can remember), as Akira and Haise walk together to the nearest coffee shop, a strange thought hits Haise; he hasn't had a nightmare in months. Said thought makes him trip right into the pavement. Akira helps him up before laughing at him, and they have to get another black coffee after that.

While standing in line, Haise mulls the thought over. Relucantly, he decides this is a good sign.  
  
The life he has isn't one that Haise would’ve chosen, but it’s what he got, and he’ll die before willingly giving it away to the stranger he was before waking up at the CCG.

Lucky that he thinks that way, because death is what he’ll get if his mental roommate wins, so he might as well be ready for that possibility.

They both have so much to loose, and really, they both want the same thing.

They just want to live.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm well aware Kaneki said to Haise that he wanted to die, but then again, if he really wanted to, he wouldn't have lasted as long as he did, would he? I'd like to think (even if it's näive) that Kaneki did want to live, he was just too scared and too hurt to realize so. 
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed! Oh boy this is my first time posting a fic in YEARS, so if you liked then please comment and tell me what you think! It's always a pleasure to talk with other fans.


End file.
